Fast track initiation followed by confirmation based on amplitude information

Abstract

In traditional radar systems, track initiation is usually performed by applying a high detection threshold at each scan, to guarantee a low false track rate. Decreasing the detection threshold will improve the track initiation performance, but will also result in more false tracks unexpectedly. In order to improve the target track initiation performance and keep a low false track rate at the same time, we study fast track initiation followed by confirmation based on amplitude information (test statistic). Explicitly, the track initiation process would firstly apply a lower detection threshold for a higher probability of target track initiation, and then based on the amplitude information, a track confirmation process is employed to eliminate false tracks. Numerical results indicate that, owing to the lower detection threshold, the track initiation process can achieve a much higher probability of target track initiation and confirmation, while a low false track rate can be achieved after the track confirmation process.